General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Taxi (تاکسی) (2015 film)

Taxi (Persian: تاکسی; also released as Taxi Tehran or Jafar Panahi's Taxi) is a 2015 Iranian film directed by Jafar Panahi, in which the banned filmmaker drives a yellow cab through the streets of Tehran for a single day, picking up a diverse group of passengers whose conversations form the film¹. Panahi himself plays the driver, and the film was clandestinely shot almost entirely within a car². It won the Golden Bear, the top prize of the Berlin International Film Festival, on February 14, 2015³.

Key fact	Detail
Director and lead	Jafar Panahi, who also wrote, produced, shot, and edited the film⁴
Premise	Panahi drives a taxi through Tehran for one day, conversing with a cross section of passengers¹
Top award	Golden Bear, Berlin International Film Festival, February 14, 2015³
Other award	FIPRESCI Prize, Berlin competition program⁴
Context	Third feature Panahi made after the Iranian authorities banned him from filmmaking at the end of 2010, following This Is Not a Film and Closed Curtain³
Runtime and premiere	82 minutes; world premiere February 6, 2015⁴
Box office	$3,906,227 worldwide, including $321,642 in the United States⁴

Spoilers

Premise and passengers

The film presents Panahi at the wheel of a taxi equipped with cameras, driving through Tehran and picking up passengers who talk with the driver about their lives and views¹^•⁴. The passengers include a man who sells banned films illegally and recognizes the director; an injured motorcyclist and his wife, who fears losing her inheritance if he dies; Panahi's niece, who wants to make a film for a school project and asks her uncle for advice; a former neighbor who was robbed; elderly women carrying goldfish to release into a fountain; and the human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, on her way to visit a political prisoner⁴. In one scene Panahi trades accounts of interrogation with Sotoudeh, herself a former political prisoner⁷.

The passengers were played by nonprofessional actors whose identities were not made public⁴. The film carries no credits, and Panahi, as performer, never takes the camera in his hands⁴.

Background: the ban

At the end of 2010 the Iranian authorities banned Jafar Panahi from making films, and he was also barred from leaving the country and ordered to stop making films for 20 years³^•⁵. Taxi was his third feature made after the ban, following This Is Not a Film (2011), made in his living room on an iPhone, and Closed Curtain, which competed at Berlin in 2013³^•⁵. The New Zealand International Film Festival noted that for the third time since the ban was imposed he had managed to produce a work on a very small scale and get it out of Iran and into competition at a major international festival⁶.

Production methods

The film was clandestinely shot almost entirely within a car². To avoid attracting attention, no additional lighting could be used inside the taxi; instead Panahi cut a hole in the roof of the car to get enough light for filming⁴. The film was shot on the streets of Tehran⁴.

Reception and awards

Taxi premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 6, 2015, and won the Golden Bear on February 14⁴^•³. It also received the FIPRESCI Prize from international film critics in the competition program⁴. Because Panahi is forbidden to leave Iran, his niece Hana Saeidi, who appears in the film, accepted the Golden Bear on his behalf⁴.

Reactions differed. Critics in Europe and the United States generally welcomed the film, while some conservative media in Iran called it anti-Iranian⁸. A Persian-language Euronews commentary argued that, unlike the more improvisational This Is Not a Film, Taxi Tehran is a constructed fiction onto which the filmmaker's social and political ideas are imposed, a point one of the film's characters, the film pirate, raises in the film itself⁹. The film was the only Iranian film at that year's London Film Festival⁹.

Place in Panahi's career

Taxi is one of a series of films Panahi made under restriction, each built around a constraint: This Is Not a Film in his apartment, Closed Curtain indoors, and Taxi inside a moving car⁵^•¹⁰. A conversation with a former prisoner later inspired a scene in the film, the exchange with Sotoudeh⁷.

The film's success contributed to Panahi's standing among the most decorated working directors. In May 2025 he won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for It Was Just an Accident, and among the world's active filmmakers he is the only one to have won the top awards at all three major European festivals, Cannes, Berlin, and Venice¹¹^•¹².

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026